Luara watched as they took the body away. The dead
Mr. Stubbs. Smiling, cheerful Winston Stubbs, all winking piratical wickedness, now a small bald corpse with its chest smashed open. Laura leaned on the wet walkway rail- ing, watching as the ambulance van cleared the cordon of lights. Unhappy city cops in wet yellow slickers manned the road. It had begun to rain with morning, a bleak September front off the mainland.
Laura turned and pushed through the lobby door. Inside, the Lodge felt empty, a havoc area. All the guests were gone.
The Europeans had abandoned their luggage in their panic flight. The Singaporeans, too, had slunk off rapidly during the confusion.
Laura walked upstairs to the tower office. It was just after nine in the morning. Within the office, Debra Emerson prere- corded calls for the Central Committee, her quiet murmur going over the details of the killing for the fourth time. The fax machine whined on copy.
Laura poured herself coffee, slopping some onto the table.
She sat down and picked up the terrorists' publicity release.
The assassins' statement had come online at the Rizome
Lodge only ten minutes after the killing. She had read it three times already, with stunned disbelief. Now she read the state- ment over one more time. She had to understand. She had to deal with it.
F.A.C.T. DIRECT ACTION BULLETIN-SPECIAL
RELEASE TO AGENCIES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
At 07:21 GMT September 12, 2023, designated com- mandos of the Free Army of Counter-Terrorism carried out sentence on Winston Gamaliel Stubbs, a so-called corporate officer in the piratical and subversive organized- crime unit known as the United Bank of Grenada. The oppressed people of Grenada will rejoice at this long- delayed act of justice against the drug-running crypto-
Marxist junta which has usurped the legitimate political aspirations of the island's law-abiding population.
The sentence of execution took place at the Rizome
Lodge of Galveston, Texas, U.S.A. (telex GALVEZRIG, ph. (713) 454-9898), where Rizome Industries Group,
Inc., an American-based multinational, was engaged in criminal conspiracy with the Grenadian malefactors.
We accuse the aforesaid corporation, Rizome Indus- tries Group, Inc., of attempting to reach a cowardly accommodation with these criminal groups, in an im- moral and illegal protection scheme which deserves the harshest condemnation from state, national, and interna- tional law enforcement agencies. With this act of short- sighted greed, Rizome Industries Group, Inc., has cynically betrayed the efforts of legitimate institutions, both private and public, to contain the menace of crimi- nally supported state terrorism.
It is the long-sustained policy of the Free Army of
Counter-Terrorism (FACT) to strike without mercy at the cryptototalitarian vermin who pervert doctrines of national sovereignty. Behind its mask of national legal- ity, the Grenada United Bank has provided financial, data, and intelligence support to a nexus of pariah orga- nizations. The executed felon, Winston Stubbs, has in particular maintained close personal involvement with such notorious groups as the Tanzanian Knights of Jah, the Inadin Cultural Revolution, and the Cuban Capitalist Cells.
In eliminating this menace to the international order,
FACT has performed a valuable service to the true cause of law enforcement and global justice. We pledge to maintain our course of direct military action against the economic, political, and human resources of the so-called
United Bank of Grenada until this antihuman and oppres- sive institution is entirely and permanently liquidated.
A further intelligence dossier on the crimes of the deceased, Winston Stubbs, may be accessed within the files of the United Bank itself: Direct-dial (033) 75664543,
Account ID: FR2774. Trapdoor: 23555AK. Password:
FREEDOM.
So flat, Laura thought, setting the printout aside. It read like computer-generated prose, long, obsessive streams of clauses ... Stalinist. No grace or fire in it, just steam-driven robot pounding. Any pro in P. R. could have done better-she could have done better. She could have done a lot better in making her company, and her home, and her people, and herself, look like garbage.... She felt a sudden surge of helpless rage, so powerful that tears came. Laura fought them back. She peeled away the printout's perforated strip and rolled it between her fingers, staring at nothing.
"Laura?" David emerged from downstairs, carrying the baby. The mayor of Galveston followed him.
Laura stood up jerkily. "Mr. Mayor! Good morning."
Mayor Alfred A. Magruder nodded. "Laura." He was a hefty Anglo in his sixties, his barrel paunch wrapped in a garish tropical dashiki. He wore sandals and jeans and had a long Santa Claus beard. Magruder's face was flushed and his blue eyes in their little pockets of suntanned fat had the rigid look of contained fury. He waded into the room and flung his briefcase onto the table.
Laura spoke quickly. "Mr. Mayor, this is our security coordinator, Debra Emerson. Ms. Emerson, this is Alfred
Magruder, Galveston's mayor."
Emerson rose from the console. She and Magruder looked each other up and down. They summed each other up with slight involuntary winces of distaste. Neither offered to shake hands. Bad vibes, Laura thought shakily, echoes from some long-buried social civil war. Already things were out of control.
"There's some heavy heat coming down here soon,"
Magruder announced, looking at Laura. "And now your old man here tells me that your pirate friends are at large on my island. "
"It was quite impossible for us to stop them," Emerson said. Her voice had the infuriating calmness of a grade school teacher.
Laura cut in. "The Lodge was strafed by a machine gun,
Mr. Mayor. It woke the whole staff-threw us into panic.
And the-the guests-were up and out of here before the rest of us could think of anything. We called the police---
"And your corporate headquarters," Magruder said. He paused. "I want a record of all the calls in and out of this place."
Laura and Emerson spoke at once.
"Well of course I called Atlanta-"
"That will need a warrant-"
Magruder cut them off. "The Vienna Convention heat will seize your records anyway. Don't screw me around on technicalities, okay? We're all walking fast and loose here, that's the point of Fun City. But y'all have gone way over the line this time. And someone's ass is gonna fry, okay?"
He glanced at David. David nodded once, his face frozen in a bogus look of chipper nice-guy alertness. -
Magruder plunged on. "Now who's it gonna be? Is it gonna be me?" He thumbed his baggy shirt, prodding a splashy yellow azalea. "Is it gonna be you? Or is it gonna be these pirate assholes from off-the-island?" He drew a breath.
"This is a terrorist action, comprende? That kind of crap isn't supposed to come down anymore."
Debra Emerson was all strained politeness. "It still does,
Mr. Mayor."
"Maybe in Africa," Magruder grunted. "Not here!"
"The point is to cut the feedback relationship between terrorism and the global media," Emerson said. "So you needn't worry about bad publicity. The Vienna Convention specifies-"
"Look," Magruder said, turning the full force of his glare on Emerson. "You're not dealing with some cracker hippie here, okay? When this blows over you can sneak back to your spook warren in Atlanta, but I'll still be down here trying to make a go of a city on the fucking ropes! It's not the press that scares me-it's the cops! Global cops, too-not the locals, I can deal with them. I don't want to go down on their bad-boy list with the data-haven mafiosi. So do I need you using my island for your clapped-out shenanigans? No, ma'am,
I don't."
Rage boiled up in Laura. "What the hell is this? Did we shoot him? We got shot at, Your Honor, okay? Go outside and look at my house." .
They stared at her, shocked at her outburst. "They could have killed us. They could have blown the whole Lodge up."
She snatched up the printout and shook it at Magruder.
"They even wrote directly to us and taunted us! The F.A.C.T.
-whoever they are-they're the killers, what about them?"
The baby's face clouded up and she tried a tentative sob.
David rocked her in his arms, half turning away. Laura lowered her voice. "Mr. Mayor, I see what you're getting at.
And I guess I'm sorry about this, or whatever the hell you want me to say. But we have to face the truth. These data- haven people are professionals, they're long gone. Except maybe the other Grenadian, Sticky Thompson. I think I know where Thompson is. He's gone underground here in Galves- ton, with the Church girl. I mean your friends here in the
Church of Ishtar, Mr. Mayor."
She shot a quick look at David. David's face had thawed, he was with her. He looked encouragement: go on, babe.
"And we don't want them looking at the Church, do we?
They're all webbed together, these fringe groups. Pull one thread and the whole thing comes apart."
"And we end up bare-ass naked," David put in. "All of us."
The mayor grimaced, then shrugged. "But that's exactly what I was saying."
"Damage limitation," Emerson said.
"Right, that's it."
Emerson smiled. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."
Laura's watchphone beeped. She glanced at the board. It was a priority call. "I'll take it downstairs and !et y'all talk," she said.
David followed her downstairs, with Loretta in the crook of his arm. "Those two old boomers," he muttered.
"Yeah." She paused as they stepped into the dining room.
"You were great," he said.
"Thanks '
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay. Now." The Lodge staff, red-eyed with lack of sleep, sat around the largest table, taking in Spanish.
They were disheveled and shaky. The gunfire had jolted them out of bed at two in the morning. David stopped with them.
Laura took her call in the little downstairs office. It was
Emily Donato, calling from Atlanta. "I just heard," Emily said. She was pale. "Are you all right?"
"They shot up the Lodge," Laura said. "They killed him.
The old Rastaman, I was standing right next to him." She paused. "I was scared of the spy machine. He came out to protect me. But they were waiting for him, and they shot him dead right there."
"You're not hurt, though."
"No, it was the walls, y'know, concretized sand. The bullets sank right in. No ricochets." Laura paused again and ran her fingers through her hair. "I can't believe I'm saying this."
"I just wanted to say.... Well, I'm with you all the way on this one. You and David. All the way." She held up two fingers, pressed together. "Solidarity, okay?"
Laura smiled for the first time in hours. "Thanks, Em."
She looked at her friend's face gratefully. Emily's video makeup looked off; too much blusher, eyeliner shaky. Laura touched her own bare cheek. "I forgot my vid makeup,"
Laura blurted, realizing it for the first time. She felt a sudden unreasoning surge of panic. Of all the days-a day when she'd be on the Net all the time.
There was noise in the lobby. Laura glanced through the open door of the office and past the front desk. A woman in uniform had just pushed through the lobby door from outside.
A. black woman. Short hair, military blouse, big leather gun belt, cowboy hat in her hand. A Texas Ranger.
"Oh, Jesus, the Rangers are here," Laura said.
Emily nodded, her eyes wide. "I'm loggin' off, I know you have your hands full.
"Okay, bye." Laura hung up. She hurried past the desk into the lobby. A blond man in civvies followed the Ranger into the Lodge. He wore a charcoal-gray tailored suit vented at the waist, wide, flamboyant tie in computer-paisley.... He had dark glasses and had a suitcase terminal in his hand. The
Vienna heat.
"I'm Laura Webster," Laura told the Ranger. "The Lodge coordinator." She offered her hand. The Ranger ignored it, giving her a look of blank hostility.
The Vienna spook set down his portable terminal, took
Laura's hand, and smiled sweetly. He was very handsome, with an almost feminine look-high Slavic cheekbones, a long, smooth swoop of blond hair over one ear, a film-star mole dotting his right cheekbone. He released her hand reluc- tantly, as if tempted to kiss it. "Sorry to greet you in such circumstances, Ms. Webster. I am Voroshilov. This is my local liaison, Captain Baster. "
"Baxter," the Ranger said.
"You witnessed the attack, I understand," Voroshilov said.
"Yes.'
"Excellent. I must interview you." He paused and touched a small stud on the corner of his dark glasses. A long fiber- optic cord trailed from the earpiece down into the vest of his suit. Laura saw now that the sunglasses were videocams, the new bit-mapped kind with a million little pixel lenses. He was filming her. "The terms of the Vienna Convention require me to tell you of your legal position. First, your speech is being recorded and you are being filmed. Your statements will be kept on file by various agencies of Vienna Convention signatory governments. I am not required to specify these agencies or the amount or location of the data from this investigation.
Vienna treaty investigation are not subject to freedom-of- information or privacy laws. You have no right to an attorney.
Investigations under the convention have global priority over the laws of your nation and state."
Laura nodded, barely following this burst of rote. She had heard it all before, on television shows. TV thrillers were very big on the Vienna heat. Guys showing up, flicking hologram ID cards, overriding the programming on taxis and zooming around on manual, chasing baddies. They never forgot their video makeup, either. "I understand, Comrade
Voroshilov. "
Voroshilov lifted his head. "What an interesting smell. I do admire regional cooking."
Laura started. "Can I offer you something?"
"Some mint tea would be very fine. Oh, just tea, if you have no mint."
"Something for you, Captain Baxter?"
Baxter glared. "Where was he killed?"
"My husband can help you with that...." She touched her watchphone. "David?"
David looked into the lobby through the dining room door.
He saw the police, turned, and shot some quick, urgent border-Spanish over his shoulder at the staff. All Laura caught was los Rinches, the Rangers, but chairs scraped and Mrs.
Delrosario appeared in a hung.
Laura made introductions. Voroshilov turned the intimidat- ing videoglasses on everyone in turn.. They were creepy- looking things-at a certain angle Laura could see a fine-etched golden spiderwebbing in the opaque lenses. No moving parts.
David left with the Ranger.
Laura found herself sipping tea with the Vienna spook in the downstairs office. "Remarkable decor," Voroshilov ob- served, easing back in the vinyl car seat and shooting an inch of creamy-looking shirtcuff through his charcoal-gray coat sleeves.
"Thank you, Comrade."
Voroshilov lifted his videoglasses with a practiced gesture, favoring her with a long stare from velvety blue pop-star eyes. "You're a Marxist?"
"Economic democrat," Laura said. Voroshilov rolled his eyes in brief involuntary derision and set the glasses back onto his nose. "Have you heard from the F.A.C.T. before today?"
"Never," Laura said. "Never heard of them."
"The statement makes no mention of the groups from
Europe and Singapore."
"I don't think they knew the others were here," Laura said. "We-Rizome, I mean-we were very careful on security. Ms.
Emerson, our security person, can tell you more about that."
Voroshilov smiled. "The American notion of `careful security.'
I'm touched." He paused. "Why are you involved in this? It's not your business."
"It is now," Laura said. "Who is this F.A.C.T.? Can you help us against them?"
"They don't exist," Voroshilov said. "Oh, they did once.
Years ago. All those millions your American government spent, little groups here, little groups there. Ugly little spin- offs from the Old Cold Days. But F.A.C.T. is just a front now, a fairy story. F.A.C.T. is a mask the data havens hide behind to shoot at each other." He made a pistol-pointing gesture. "Like the old Red Brigades, pop-pop-pop against
NATO. Angolan UNITA, pop-pop-pop against the Cubans."
He smiled. "So here we are, yes, we sit in these nice chairs, we drink this nice tea like civilized people. Because you stepped into the rubbish left over because your grandfather didn't like mine. "
"What do you plan to do?"
"I ought to scold you," Voroshilov said. "But I'm going to scold your ex-CIA commissar upstairs. And my Ranger friend will scold too. My Ranger friend doesn't care for the nasty mess you make of the nice reputation of Texas." He flipped up the screen of his terminal and keyed in commands.
"You saw the flying drone that did the shooting."
"Yes.'
"Tell me if you see it here."
Images flashed by, four-second bursts of nicely shaded computer graphics. Stubby-winged aircraft with blind fuse- lages-no cockpit, they were radio controlled. Some were spattered in camouflage. Others showed ID numbers in sten- ciled Cyrillic or Hebrew. "No, not like that," Laura said.
Voroshilov shrugged and touched the keys. Odder-looking craft appeared: two little blimps. Then a skeletal thing, like a collision between a helicopter and a child's tricycle. Then a kind of double-rotored golfball. Then an orange peanut. "Hold it," Laura said.
Voroshilov froze the image. "That's it," Laura said. "That landing gear-like a barbecue pit." She stared at it. The narrow waist of the peanut had two broad counterrotating helicopter blades. "When the blades move, they catch the light, and it looks like a saucer," she said aloud. "A flying saucer with big bumps on the top and the bottom."
Voroshilov examined the screen. "You saw a Canadair
CL-227 VTOL RPV. Vertical Take-Off and Landing, Re- motely Piloted Vehicle. It has a range of thirty miles-miles, what a silly measurement. He typed a note on his
Cyrillic keyboard. "It was probably launched somewhere on this island by the assassins... or perhaps from a ship. Easy to launch, this thing. No runway."
"The one I saw was a different color. Bare metal, I think. "
"And equipped with a machine gun," Voroshilov said.
"Not standard issue. But an old craft. like this has been on the black arms markets for many, many years. Cheap to buy if you have the contacts."
"Then you can't trace the owners?"
He looked at her pityingly.
Voroshilov's watchphone beeped. It was the Ranger. "I'm out here on the walkway," she said. "I have one of the slugs. "
"Let me guess," Voroshilov said. "Standard NATO 35
millimeter. "
"Affirmative, yes."
"Think of those millions and millions of unfired NATO
bullets," mused Voroshilov. "Too many even for the African market, eh? An unfired bullet has a kind of evil pressure in it, don't you think? Something in it wants to be fired...." He . paused, his blank lenses fixed on Laura. "You're not following me."
"Sorry, I thought you were talking to her." Laura paused.
"Can't you do anything?"
"The situation seems clear," he said. "An `inside job,' as they say. One of the pirate groups had collaborators on this island. Probably the Singapore Islamic Bank, famous for treachery. They had the chance to kill Stubbs and took it."
He shut down the screen. "During my flight into Galveston, I accessed the file in Grenada, on Stubbs, that was mentioned in the FACT communiqué. Very interesting to read. The killers exploited the nature of data-haven banking-that the coded files are totally secure, even against the haven pirates themselves. Only a haven would turn a haven's strength against itself in this humiliating way."
"You must be able to help us, though. "
Voroshilov shrugged. "The local police can carry out cer- tain actions. Tracing the local ships, for instance-see if any . were close offshore, and who hired them. But I am glad to say that this was not an act of politically motivated terrorism.
I would classify this as a gangster killing. The FACT
communiqué is only an attempt to muddy the waters. A
Vienna Convention case has certain publicity restrictions that they, find useful."
"But a man was killed here!"
"It was a murder, yes. But not a threat to the political order of the Vienna Convention signatories."
Laura was shocked. "Then what good are you?"
Voroshilov looked hurt. "Oh, we are very much good at easing international tension. But we are not a global police force." He emptied his teacup and set it aside. "Oh, Moscow has been pressing for a true global police force for many years now. But Washington stands in the way. Always trifling about Big Brother, civil liberties, privacy laws. It's an old story."
"You can't help us at all."
Voroshilov stood up. "Ms. Webster, you invited these gangsters into your home, I didn't. If you had called us first we would have urged you against it in the strongest possible terms." He hefted his terminal. "I need to interview your husband next. Thank you for the tea."
Laura left him and went upstairs to the telecom office.
Emerson and the mayor were sitting together on one of the rattan couches, with the satisfied look of people who had beaten a debate into submission. Magruder was forking his way through a belated Tex-Mex breakfast of migas and refried beans.
Laura sat down in a chair across the table and leaned forward, vibrating with anger. "Well, you two look comfortable."
"You've been talking to the Vienna representative," Emerson said.
"He's no goddamn use at all."
"KGB," Emerson sniffed.
"He says it's not political, not their jurisdiction."
Emerson looked. surprised. "Hmmph. That's a first for them."
Laura stared at her. "Well, what do we do about it?"
Magruder set down a glass of milk. "We're shutting you down, Laura."
"Just for a while," Emerson added.
Laura's jaw dropped. "Shutting down my Lodge? Why? Why?"
"It's all worked out," Magruder said. "See, if it's criminal, then the media get to swarm all over us. They'd play it up big, and it'd be worse for tourism than a shark scare. But if we shut you down, then it looks like spook business.
Classified. And nobody looks too deep when Vienna comes calling." He shrugged. "I mean, they'll figure it eventually, but by then it'd be old news. And the damage is limited." He stood up. "I need to talk to that Ranger. You know. Assure her that the city of Galveston will cooperate in every way possible." He picked up his briefcase and lumbered down the stairs.
Laura glared at Emerson. "So that's it? You shut down the scandal, and David and I pay the price?"
Emerson smiled gently. "Don't be impatient, dear. Our project isn't over because of this one attack. Don't forget- it's because of attacks like this that the pirates agreed to meet in the first place."
Laura was surprised. She sat down. Hope appeared amidst her confusion. "So you're still pursuing that? Despite all this?"
"Of course, Laura. The problem has scarcely gone away, has it? No, it's closer to us than ever before. We're lucky we didn't lose you-you, a very valued associate."
Laura looked up, surprised. Debra Emerson's face was set quite calmly-the face of a woman simply relaying the truth.
Not flattery-a fact. Laura sat up straighter. "Well, it was an attack on Rizome, wasn't it? A direct attack on our company."
"Yes. They found a weakness in us-the F.A.C.T. did, or the people behind that alias." Emerson looked grave. "There must have been a security leak. That deadly aircraft-I sus- pect it's been waiting in ambush for days. Someone knew of the meeting and was watching this place."
"A security leak within Rizome?"
"We mustn't jump to conclusions. But we will have to find out the truth. It's more important than this Lodge, Laura.
Much more important." She paused. "We can come to terms with the Vienna investigators. We can come to terms with the city of Galveston. But that's not the hardest part. We prom- ised safety to the people at this conference, and we failed.
Now we need someone to smooth the waters. In Grenada."
Rizome's Chattahoochee Retreat was in the foothills of the
Smokies, about sixty miles northeast of Atlanta. Eight hun- dred acres of wooded hills in a valley with a white stony creek that was dry this year. Chattahoochee was _a favorite of . the Central Committee; it was close enough to the city for convenience, and boondocky enough for people to stay out of the Committee's collective face.
New recruits were often brought here-in fact this was where Emily had first introduced her to David Webster. Back in the old stone farmhouse, the one without the geodesics.
Laura couldn't look at these Chattahoochee hills without re- membering that night: David, a stranger, tall and thin and elegant in midnight blue, with a drink in his hand and black hair streaming down his back.
In fact everybody in that party, all the sharper recruits anyway, had gone out of their way to dress in penthouse elegance. To go against the grain a bit, to show they weren't going to be socialized all that easily, thank you. But here they were, years later, out in the Georgia woods with the Central
Committee, not new recruits but full-fledged associates, playing for keeps.
Of course the Committee personnel were all different now, but certain traditions persisted.
You could tell the' importance of this meeting by the elabo- rate informality of their dress. Normal problems they would have run through in Atlanta, standard boardroom stuff, but this Grenada situation was a genuine crisis. Therefore, the whole Committee were wearing their Back-slapping Hick look, a kind of Honest Abe the Rail-Splitter image. Frayed denim jeans, flannel work shirts rolled up to the elbow... .
Garcia-Meza, a hefty Mexican industrialist who looked like he could bite tenpenny nails in half, was carrying a big straw picnic basket.
It was funny to think of Charlie Cullen being CEO.. Laura hadn't met Cullen face to face since his appointment, though she'd networked with him a little when they were building the
Lodge. Cullen was a biochemist, in construction plastics mostly, a nice enough guy. He was a great caretaker Rizome
CEO, because you trusted him instinctively-but he didn't much come across as an alley fighter. Since' his appointment he'd taken to wearing a gray fedora perched on the back of his head. Less like a hat than a halo or crown. It was funny how authority affected people.
Cullen's whole face had changed. With his square chin and broad nose, and mouth gone a little severe, he was starting to look like a black George Washington. The original, primeval
George Washington, not the recent black president by the same name.
Then there were the others. Sharon McIntyre, Emily Donato's mentor on the Committee, and Emily herself, her ringleted hair caught under a scarf so that she looked like she'd just been cleaning a stove. Kaufmann, the realpolitik European, managing to look refined and natty even in jeans and knap- sack. De Valera, self-styled firebrand of the Committee, who tended to grandstand, but was. always coming up with the bright idea. The professorial Gauss, and the cozy-conciliatory
Raduga. And bringing up the rear of the group, the ancient
Mr. Saito. Saito was wearing a kind of Ben Franklin fur hat and bifocals, but he leaned on a tall knotted staff, like some hybridized Taoist hermit.
Then there were herself, and David, and Debra Emerson.
Not Committee members, but witnesses.
Cullen crunched to a stop in a leaf-strewn autumn glade.
They were meeting far from wires for security reasons. They'd even left their watchphones behind, in one of the farmhouses.
McIntyre and Raduga spread a large checkered picnic cloth.
Everyone shuffled into a circle and sat. They joined hands and sang a Rizome anthem. Then they ate.
It was fascinating to watch. The Committee really worked at it, that sense of community. They'd made a practice of living together for weeks on end. Doing each other's laundry, tending each other's kids. It was policy. They were elected, but once in power they were given wide authority and ex- pected to get on with it. For Rizome, getting on with it meant a more or less open, small-scale conspiracy.
Of course the fashion for gemeineschaft intensity came and went. Years ago, during Saito's period as CEO, there had been a legendary time when he'd taken the whole Committee to Hokkaido. When they rose before dawn to bathe naked in freezing waterfalls. And ate brown rice and, if rumor were true, had killed, butchered, and eaten a deer while living for three days in a cave. No one on the Committee had ever talked much about the experience afterward, but there was no denying that they'd become one hell of a group.
Of course that was the sort of bullshit half-legendry that clumped around any center of corporate power, but the Com- mittee fed the mystique. And Rizome instinctively fell back on gut-level solidarity in times of trouble.
It was far from perfect. You could see it by the way they were acting-the way, for instance, that de Valera and
Kaufmann made an unnecessarily big deal over who was going to cut and serve the bread. But you could see that it worked, too. Rizome association was a lot more than a job. It was tribal. You could live and die for it.
It was a simple meal. Apples, bread, cheese, some "ham spread" that was obviously tailored scop. And mineral water.
Then they got to business-not calling anybody to order, but drifting into it, bit by bit.
They started with the F.A.C.T. They were more afraid of them than of Grenada. The Grenadians were thieving pirates, but at least they'd stayed in deep background, whereas the
F.A.C.T., whoever they were, had seriously embarrassed the company. Thanks to that, they had Vienna to worry about now, though Vienna was vacillating. Even more than usual.
Rizome was determined to track down the F.A.C.T. They didn't expect that it would be simple or easy, but Rizome was a major multinational with thousands of associates and out- posts on five continents. They had contacts throughout the
Net and a tradition of patience. Sooner or later they would get at the truth. No matter who was hiding it.
The immediate target of suspicion was Singapore, either the Islamic Bank or the Singapore Government, though the lines between the two were blurry. No one doubted Singapore was capable of carrying out the killing in Galveston. Singa- pore had never signed the Vienna Convention, and they boasted openly of the reach of their military and intelligence services.
It was hard to understand, though, why they would pick a fight with Grenada, after agreeing to negotiate. Especially a rash provocation like the Stubbs killing, guaranteed to enrage
Grenada without doing real strategic damage. Singapore was arrogant, and technologically reckless, but no one had ever said they were stupid.
So the Committee agreed to suspend judgment while await- ing further evidence. There were too many possibilities at present, and to try to cover every every contingency would only bring paralysis. In the meantime they would move with the initiative, ignoring the terrorist communiqué.
FACT was obviously a threat, assuming FACT had a separate existence from the people they were already dealing with.
But they'd had a clear chance to kill a Rizome associate-
Laura-and had chosen not to take it. That was some small comfort.
The discussion moved to the Grenada situation.
"I don't see what we can do on the ground in Grenada that we can't manage over the Net," Raduga said.
"It's time we stopped making that false distinction!" de
Valera said. "With our newest online stuff-the tech Vienna uses-we are the Net. I mean-in MacLuhanesque terms-a
Rizome associate in videoshades can be a cognitive spearhead for the entire company:..."
"We're not Vienna," Kaufmann said. "It does not mean it will work for us."
"We're in a one-down situation with Grenada now," said
Cullen. "We're not in a position to talk media invasion."
"Yes, Charlie," de Valera said, "but don't you see, that's exactly why it will work. We go in apologizing, but we come out indoctrinating.
Cullen frowned. "We're responsible for the death of one of their top people. This Winston Stubbs. It's. as if one of us had been killed. Like we'd lost Mr. Saito."
Simple words, but Laura could see it hit them. Cullen had a knack for pulling things down to human scale. They were wincing.
"That is why I should go to Grenada," Saito said. He never said much. He didn't need to.
"I don't like it," said Garcia-Meza. "Why make this an eye-for-eye situation? It's not our fault that the pirates have enemies. We didn't shoot them. And we are not one down, because they were never up on our level." Garcia-Meza was the hard-liner of the group. "I think this diplomatic approach was a mistake. You don't stop thieves by kissing them." He paused. "But I agree that we can't back out now. Our credibility's at stake."
"We can't allow this to degenerate into a gangster power struggle," Gauss declared. "We have to restore the trust that we went to such pains to establish. So we must convince
Grenada of three things: that it was not our doing, that we are still trustworthy, and that they can gain from cooperation with us. Not from confrontation."
That kind of plonking summation was typical of Gauss. He had killed the conversation. "I think Heinrich has hit it on the head," Cullen said at last. "But we can't do any of that convincing by remote control. We need to send people in who can press the flesh and get right on the Grenadians, hand to hand. Show them what we're made of, how we operate."
"All right," David said sharply. Laura was surprised.
She'd felt the pressure building, but she'd assumed he would let her pick the moment. "It's obvious," he said. "Laura and
I are the ones you need. Grenada knows us already, they've got dossiers on us a foot thick. And we were there when
Stubbs was killed. If you don't send us-the eyewitnesses- they're bound to wonder why not."
The Committee members were silent a moment-either wondering at his tone, or maybe appreciating the sacrifice.
"David and I feel responsible," Laura added. "Our luck's been bad so far, but we're willing to see the project through.
And we have no other assignments, since Galveston shut our
Lodge down."
Cullen looked unhappy. Not with them-with the situation.
"David, Laura, I appreciate that correct attitude. It's very courageous. I know you're aware of the danger. Better than we are, since you've seen it personally."
David shrugged it off. He never reacted well to praise.
"Frankly, I'm less afraid of the Grenadians than the people who shot them."
"An excellent point. I also note that the terrorists shot them in America," Gauss said. "Not in Grenada, where the security is much stronger."
"I should go," Saito objected. "Not because I would be better at it." A polite lie. "But I am an old man. I have little to lose."
"And I'll go with him," said Debra Emerson, speaking for the first time. "If there's any blame in this security debacle, it's certainly not the Websters'. It's my own. I was also at the
Lodge. I can testify as well as Laura can."
"We can't go into this expecting that our people will be shot!" de Valera said passionately. "We must arrange things so they never even think we might be prey. Either that, or not go in at all. Because if that confidence fails, it's gonna be war, and we'll have to become gangland soldiers. Not eco- nomic democrats."
"No guns," Cullen agreed. "But we do have armor, at least. We can give our diplomats the armor of the Net.
Whoever goes will be online twenty-four hours. We'll know exactly where they are, exactly what they're doing. Every- thing they see and hear will be taped and distributed. All of
Rizome will be behind them, a media ghost on their shoulder.
Grenada will respect that. They've already agreed to those terms."
"I think Charlie's right," Garcia-Meza said, unexpectedly.
"They won't harm our diplomats. What's the point? If they want to savage Rizome, they won't start with the Websters just because they are close at hand. They are not so naive. If they shoot us, they will shoot for the head. They will go for us-the Committee."
"Jesus," de Valera said. .
"We are feasting with tigers here," Garcia-Meza insisted.
"This is a vital operation and we'll have to watch each step.
So I'm glad we have those Vienna glasses. We'll need them."
"Let me go," Ms. Emerson begged. "They're young and they have a baby."
"Actually," de Valera said, "I think that's the Websters'
major advantage as candidates. I think the Websters should go, and I think they should take their baby with them." He smiled at the circle, enjoying the stir he'd created. "Look, think about it. A peaceable young married couple, with a baby. It's a perfect diplomatic image for our company, because it's true. It's what they are, isn't it? It may sound cold-blooded, but it's a perfect psychological defense."
"Well," said Garcia-Meza, "I don't often agree with de
Valera, but that's clever. These pirates are macho. They would be ashamed to fight with babies."
Kaufmann spoke heavily. "I did not want to mention this.
But Debra's background in American intelligence... that is simply not something that a Third World country like Gre- nada will accept. And I do not want to send a Committee member, because, frankly, such a target is too tempting." He turned to them. "I hope you understand, David and Laura, that I mean no reflection on your own high value as associates. "
"I just don't like it," Cullen said. "Maybe there's no other choice, but I don't like risking company people."
"We're all in danger now," Garcia-Meza said darkly. "No matter what choices we make."
"I believe in this initiative!" de Valera declared. "I pushed for this from the beginning. I know the consequences. I truly believe the Grenadians will go for this-they're not barbar- ians, and they know their own best interests. If our diplomats . are hurt on duty, I'll take the heat and resign my post."
Emily was annoyed by this grab for the limelight. "Don't be non-R, de Valera! That won't do them much good."
De Valera shrugged off the accusation. "David, Laura, I hope you understand my offer in the meaning I intended.
We're associates, not bosses and pawns. If you're hurt, I won't walk from that. Solidarity."
"None of us will walk," Cullen said. "We don't have that luxury. Laura, David, you realize what's at stake. If we fail to smooth things with Grenada, it could plunge us into disas- ter. We're asking you to risk yourselves-but we're giving you the power to risk all of us. And that kind of power is very rare in this company."
Laura felt the weight of it. They wanted an answer. They were looking to the two of them. There was no one else for them to look to.
She and David had already talked it out, privately. They knew they could duck this assignment, without blame. But they had lost their home, and it would leave all their plans floundering. It seemed better to seize the risk, go with the flow of the crisis, and depend on their own abilities to deal with it. Better that than to sit back like victims and let terrorists trample their lives with impunity. Their minds were made up.
"We can do it," Laura said. "If you back us."
"It's settled then." And that was that. They all rose and folded up the picnic. And went back to the farmhouses.
Laura and David began training immediately with the videoglasses.
They were the first the company had bought, and they were grotesquely expensive. She'd never realized it before, but each set cost as much as a small house.
They looked it, too-at close range they had the strange aura of scientific instruments. Nonconsumer items, very spe- cialized, very clean. Heavy, too-a skin of tough black plas- tic, but packed tight with pricy superconductive circuitry.
They had no real lenses in hem-just thousands of bitmapped light detectors. The raw output was a prismatic blur- visual software handled all the imagery, depth of focus, and so on. Little invisible beams measured the position of the user's eyeballs. The operator, back at his screen, didn't have to depend on the user's gaze, though. With software he could examine anything in the entire field of vision.
You could see right through them, even though they were opaque from outside. They could even be set to adjust for astigmatism or what have you.
They made custom-fitted foam earpieces for both of them.
No problem there, that was old tech.
Chattahoochee Retreat had a telecom room that made the
Galveston Lodge's look premillennial,. They did a crash course in videoglass technique. Strictly hands-on, typical Rizome training. The two of them took turns wandering over the grounds, scanning things at random, refining their skills. A
lot to look at: greenhouses, aquaculture ponds, peach or- chards, windmills. A day-care crèche where a Retreat staffer was baby-sitting Loretta. Rizome had given the crèche system a shot, years ago, but people hadn't liked it-too kibbutzish, never caught on.
The Retreat had been a working farm once, before single cell protein came in and kicked the props out of agriculture. It was a bit Marie Antoinette now, like a lot of modem farms.
Specialty crops, greenhouse stuff. A lot of that commercial greenhouse work was in the cities now, where the markets were-..'
Then they would go inside, and watch their tapes, and get vertigo. And then try it again, but with books balanced on their heads. And then take turns, one monitoring the screen and the other out walking and taking instruction and bitching cheerfully about how tough it was. It was good to be working at something. They felt more in control.
It was going to work, Laura decided. They were going to run a propaganda number on the Grenadians and let the
Grenadians run a propaganda number on them, and that would be it. A risk, yes-but also the widest exposure they'd ever had within the company, and that meant plenty in itself. The
Committee hadn't been crass enough to talk directly about reward, but they didn't have to; that wasn't how things were done in Rizome. It was all understood.
Dangerous, yes. But the bastards had shot up her house.
She'd given up the illusion that anyplace would be truly safe anymore. She knew it wouldn't. Not until this was all over.
They had a two-hour layover in Havana. Laura fed the baby. David stretched out in his blue plastic seat, propping his sandaled feet one atop the other. Crude overhead speakers piped twinkling Russian pop music. No robot trolleys here- porters with handcarts, instead. Old janitors, too, who pushed brooms like they'd been born pushing them. In the next row of plastic seats, a bored Cuban kid dropped an empty soft- drink carton and stomped it. Laura watched dully as the mashed carton started to melt. "Let's get plastered, David said suddenly.
"What?"
David tucked his videoglasses into the pocket of his suit, careful not to smudge the lenses. "I look at it this way.
We're gonna be online the whole time in Grenada. No time to relax, no time for ourselves. But we got an eight-hour flight coming up. Eight hours in a goddamn airplane, right? That's free license to puke all over ourselves if we want. The stews'll take care of us. Let's get wasted."
Laura examined her husband. His face looked brittle. She felt the same way. These last days had been hell. "Okay,"
she said. David smiled.
He picked up the baby's tote -and they trudged to the nearest duty-free shop, a little cubbyhole full of cheap straw hats and goofy-looking heads carved from coconuts. David bought a liter flask of brown Cuban rum. He paid with cash.
The Committee had warned them against using plastic. Too.
Too easy to trace. Data havens were all over the electric money business.
The Cuban shopgirl kept the paper money in a locked drawer. David handed her a 100-ecu bill. She handed over his paper change with a sloe-eyed smile at David-she was dressed in red, chewing gum and listening to samba music over headphones. Little hip-swaying motions. David said some- thing witty in Spanish and she smiled at him.
The ground wouldn't settle under Laura's shoes. The ground in airports wasn't part of the world. It had its own logic-
Airport Culture. Global islands in a net of airline flight paths.
A nowhere node of sweat and jet lag with the smell of luggage.
They boarded their flight at Gate Diez-y-seis. Aero Cubana.
Cheapest in the Caribbean, because the Cuban government was subsidizing flights. The Cubans were still touchy about their Cold War decades of enforced isolation.
David ordered Cokes whenever the stewardess came by and topped them off with deadly layers of pungent rum. Long flight to Grenada. Distances were huge out here. The Carib- bean was flecked with cloud, far-down fractal wrinkles of greenish ocean surge. The stews showed a dubbed Russian film, some hot pop-music thing from Leningrad with lots of dance sequences, all hairdos and strobe lights. David watched it on headphones, humming and bouncing Loretta on his knee. Loretta was stupefied with travel-her eyes bulged and her sweet little face was blank as a kachina doll's.
The rum hit Laura like warm narcotic tar. The world became exotic. Businessmen in the aisles ahead had plugged their decks into the dataports overhead, next to the air vents.
Cruising forty thousand feet over Caribbean nowhere, but still plugged into the Net. Fiber-optics dangled like intravenous drips.
Laura leaned her seat back and adjusted the blower to puff her face. Airsickness lurked down there somewhere below the alcoholic numbness. She sank into a stunned doze. She dreamed... . She was wearing one of those Aero Cubana stewardess outfits, nifty blue numbers, kind of paramilitary
1940s with chunky shoulders and a pleated skirt, hauling her trolley down the aisle. Giving everyone little plastic tumblers full of something ... milk.... They were all reach- ing out demanding this milk with looks of parched despera- tion and pathetic gratitude. They were so glad she was there and really wanted her help-they knew she could make things better.... They all looked frightened, rubbing their sweating chests like something hurt there... .
A lurch woke her up. Night had fallen. David sat in a pool of light from the overhead, staring at his keyboard screen. For a moment Laura was totally disoriented, legs cramped, back aching, her cheek sticky with spit... . Someone, David prob- ably, had put a blanket over her. "My Optimal Persona," she muttered. The plane jumped three or four times.
"You awake?" David said, plucking out his Rizome ear- plug. "Hitting a little rough weather."
"Yeah?"
"September in the Caribbean." Hurricane season, she thought he didn't have to say it. He checked his new, elaborate watchphone. "We're still an hour out." On the screen, a Rizome associate in a cowboy hat gestured elo- quently at the camera, a mountain range looming behind him.
David froze the image with a keytouch.
"You're answering mail?"
"No, too drunk," David said. "Just looking at it. This guy
Anderson in Wyoming-he's a drip." David winked the screen's image off. "There's all kinds of bullshit-oh, sorry,
I mean democratic input- pilin' up for us in Atlanta. Just thought I'd get it down on disk before we leave the plane."
Laura sat up scrunchily. "I'm glad you're here with me, David."
He looked amused and touched. "Where else would I be?"
He squeezed her hand.
The baby was asleep in the seat between them, in a collaps- ible bassinet of chromed wire and padded yellow synthetic. It looked like something a high-tech Alpine climber would haul
Oxygen in. Laura touched the baby's cheek. "She all right?"
"Sure. I fed her some rum, she'll be sleeping for hours."
Laura stopped in mid-yawn. "You fed her-" He was kidding. "So you've come to that," Laura said. "Doping our innocent child." His joke had forced her awake. "Is there no limit? To your depravity?"
"All kinds of limits-while I'm online," David said. "As we're about to be, for God knows how many days. Gonna cramp our style, babe."
"Mmmm." Laura touched her face, reminded. No video makeup. She hauled her cosmetics kit from the depths of her shoulder bag and stood up. "Gotta get our vid stuff on before we land."
"Wanna try a quickie in the bathroom, standing up?"
"Probably bugged in there," Laura said, half stumbling past him into the aisle.
He whispered up at her, holding her wrist. "They say
Grenada has scuba diving, maybe we can mess around under water. Where no one can tape us."
She stared down at his tousled head. "Did you drink all that rum?"
"No use wasting it," he said.
"Oh, boy," she said. She used the bathroom, dabbed on makeup before the harsh steel mirror. By the time she re- turned to her seat they were starting their descent.